Child safety seats are widely used, and in some jurisdictions are required by law to be used, to transport young children in automotive vehicles. The vehicle safety restraint belt systems for adults cannot be used to restrain children, and child safety seats are designed to be secured in place on the vehicle seats and are equipped with shoulder and abdominal restraint systems to restrain the child for protection in case of a collision or sudden stop. The child safety seat itself has a seat bottom, a seat back, a lower torso restraint portion on each side of the seat bottom and a shoulder and head restraint portion on each side of the seat back, all of which are well padded for the child's comfort and protection. An excellent example of a well-designed child safety seat is described and shown in the present inventor's U.S. Pat. No. 4,342,482, issued Aug. 3, 1982. Among the desirable attributes of that safety seat are the provision of an abdominal pad with an integrated buckle tongue, which is easy to use and provides excellent protection for the child, and an emergency locking retractor for the restraint belt, which allows the child to lean forward in the seat.
Children are notorious for their inability to sit still for even fairly short periods of time unless there is something to occupy them. They are even less tolerant of being restrained in one place. A child restrained in a safety seat will often try to stand up, extract himself from the seat, yell and scream or cry. If the child does not stay properly seated in the safety seat, the degree to which he or she will be protected in case of a collision or sudden stop is considerably reduced. Moreover, safe operation of the vehicle can be diminished by the distraction to the driver caused by a commotion put up by a restless or angry child. The driver may physically try to replace the child in a proper sitting position in the seat or may talk or yell at the child in an effort to quiet him or her. These activities draw the driver's attention away from driving and can result in an accident.
Children can become preoccupied and comforted by music or stories, and it can be helpful in quieting an unruly child to play tape cassettes of children's music, stories or other entertainment on the vehicle's cassette player. However, these entertainments are not very enjoyable for the adult occupants of the vehicles. After awhile, they can become just plain aggravating, in which case the attitudes of the child and the driver may even be reversed - the driver becomes angry and the child becomes content.